2021

Assaults. Riots. Cell fires. Medical emergencies. Understaffed wings. Suicides. Hooch. Weapons. It’s all in a week’s work at HMP Parkhurst.

After 28 years working as a prison officer, with 22 years at HMP Parkhurst, once one of Britain’s most high security prisons, David Berridge has had to deal with it all: serial killers and gangsters, terrorists and sex offenders, psychopaths and addicts. Inside Parkhurst is his raw, uncompromising look at what really goes on behind the massive walls and menacing gates.

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. He has been assaulted and abused; he has tackled cell fires and attempted suicides, riots and dirty protests; he has helped to foil escaped plans, talked inmates down from rooftop protests, witnessed prisoners setting fire to themselves, and prevented prisoners from attempting to murder other prisoners. And now he takes us inside this secret world for the first time.

With this searingly honest account he guides us around the wings, the segregation unit, the hospital and the exercise yard, and gives vivid portraits of the drug taking, the hooch making, the constant and irrepressible violence, and the extraordinary lengths our prison officers go to everyday. Divided into three parts – the first from David’s early years on the wings, the second the middle of his career, and the third his disillusioned later years – David will take readers into the heart of life inside and shine a light on the escalating violence and the impact the government cuts are having on the wings.

Both horrifying and hilarious, David’s diaries are guaranteed to shock and entertain in equal measure.

Macronutrients or ‘macros’ are the three main nutrient groups your body can’t live without: carbohydrates, fats and protein.

So many diets focus on calorie counting, but all calories are not created equal: your body doesn’t process 20 calories of kale and 20 calories of chocolate in the same way because of their different macro breakdowns.

Macro counting is all about balance. By eating the right ratio of carbohydrates, fats and protein, you can lose weight and build muscle in a healthy, sustainable way without avoiding the foods you love. This flexible approach to dieting encourages you to make smart food choices that guarantee results.

The Macro Method will tell you everything you need to know about counting macros, including the latest research about how the diet works and its nutritional benefits. The 21-day plan will help you ditch the calorie counting for good, with more than 40 simple recipes to tempt you.

It was the biggest haul of cocaine ever discovered in the UK – £53m worth stashed inside eleven rucksacks that had snarled underneath fishing nets on the Isle of Wight. Within three hours, the police pounced, and in June 2011 five fishermen were found guilty of conspiracy to import Class A drugs. A jury believed they’d taken their boat into the Channel, then waited for someone to throw the bags into the ocean from a passing cargo ship. The men were handed prison sentences that totalled 104 years. However, when reexamined, the evidence (some of it new) proves they didn’t do it. Their boat was struggling to survive a Force Eight storm; crucial facts known only to the police were withheld; surveillance reports mysteriously disappeared; key intelligence was inexplicably spoilt; radio communications conveniently broke down; and expert radar analysis, which effectively sealed the men’s fate, was incorrect. Still imprisoned, the five men and their families continue to battle for their release. 104 Years is their story as told by the skipper of the crew on the night they found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In November 1974, British cabinet minister, John Stonehouse, walked into the sea off a beach in Miami and disappeared, seemingly drowned.  Then he was found – on the other side of the world, in Australia – and his extraordinary story began to come to light: a Labour cabinet minister and a devoted family man; also in a long-term affair with his secretary, and a spy for the Czech State Security agency, who had committed fraud and attempted to fake his own death to escape catastrophic business failures.

This is the definitive biography of Stonehouse, written by Julian Hayes, who, as the son of Stonehouse’s nephew and lawyer, Michael Hayes, is uniquely placed to tell the story of this charismatic but deeply flawed politician. As a criminal lawyer in London, Hayes has used his in-depth knowledge and experience of the criminal courts, not least the Old Bailey, where the Stonehouse trial took place, to forensically examine Stonehouse’s story, including Czech defector Josef Frolík’s claim that he was a spy.

Hayes has unearthed secret reports in the archives in Prague written by Stonehouse’s former spymasters.  He has gleaned much from family members, also lawyers involved in the trial, and from the trial documents and government papers held in archives in the UK and Australia.

Don’t cross The Neck.

As the right-hand man to ‘The Guv’nor’ himself, Lenny McLean, John ‘The Neck’ Houchin is a living legend and is now telling his story for the first time. John trained daily with Lenny in the gym to achieve his huge bulk and neck, all 23 inches of it, required to frighten the hell out of troublemakers. As the enforcers for the Krays and the Richardsons, they worked together regularly over many years ‘sorting out’ whatever needed sorting. These are the mean streets of London back when swift justice as well as fearless loyalty were the order of the day.

A new insider take from one of the most notorious characters of the time, this book is full of chippy dialogue, gangster banter, the biggest brawls, old school honour codes and pithy reflection on the changing times – from the hard men to the high life.

ON THE STREETS OF LONDON, DANGER LURKS EVERYWHERE . . .

Liv Anderson can take care of herself and she knows how to make money in a man’s world. The daughter of a convicted murderer, she’s made her way in one of the roughest parts of London by entrapping men and extorting them for money. But Liv is playing a dangerous game and soon finds herself in trouble with the city’s most notorious gangster . . .

To repay her debt, Liv is forced to pose as a secretary for a local property developer and report back on his movements. She has no idea what she’s looking for, but she’ll do anything to stay alive. And after the murder of a local prostitute and the disappearance of a friend, Liv is starting to think survival may be harder than she realised.

But Liv isn’t only concerned with repaying her debt – she also wants to know more about her father. As she desperately tries to uncover the truth about his past, her suspicious behaviour places her in grave danger. But when you’re working with gangsters, who can you trust?

‘The whole story is so terrible. You will be disgusted and amazed.’
Graham Young, confessing his crimes to detectives

There are few criminal cases more astonishing yet less well-known than that of Graham Young. A quintessentially British crime story, it involves two sensational trials, murders both certain and probable, a clutch of forgiving relatives, and scores of surviving victims.

A Passion for Poison tells the absorbing life of master poisoner, Graham Young, who killed many tens of people in a murderous career, which began as a 13 year-old schoolboy in a North-west London suburb, with the murder of his step-mother in 1960 before culminating in four further life sentences in 1971.

Best-selling true crime writer, Carol Ann Lee takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through suburban streets with which we are all familiar, but where the commonplace – dull, even – soon becomes oppressively sinister. Set against the backdrop of modern Britain, from post-war austerity to the gloom and glam of the 1970s, it sheds light on a rapidly changing society and a gruesome British true crime story.

Burying a child is every parent’s nightmare. But Marie McCourt has spent 31 years yearning to do just that.

On February 9th, 1988, her 22-year-old daughter, Helen, left her office in Liverpool city centre, and began her usual commute home. But she was never seen again… Within days, local pub landlord, Ian Simms was identified as her murderer; and despite Helen’s body not being found, a mass of incontrovertible DNA and witness evidence at his trial twelve months later resulted in a life sentence.

But Simms has refused to disclose the whereabouts of Helen’s body, meaning Marie and her family have never been able to get closure. They’ve never had a grave at which they can pay their respects.

Marie has fought for the last 30 years to find her daughter’s body and to stop other families facing the same horrifying fate, recently winning the Ministry of Justice’s approval for “Helen’s Law”, characterised by the slogan: “No Body No Parole”, to be enacted.

This is the incredible story of the crushing devastation of a mother from the loss of her daughter, a callous murderer and the indomitable strength of a woman, who would not be bowed by an outdated law.

22-year-old Valerie Storie and her fiancé, 36-year-old Michael Gregsten, were the victims of gunman, James Hanratty, 60 years ago in the notorious ‘A6 Murder’. After a 5-hour ordeal, ending in a lay-by on the A6 in Bedfordshire, Michael was shot dead; and Valerie was raped, shot and left for dead. She survived, but was paralysed and in a wheelchair until her death in 2016. In 1962, Hanratty became one of the last men in the UK to be hanged, so unleashing 40 years of fierce and passionate debate, as many were convinced of his innocence. Valerie, however, was never in any doubt, and easily picked out Hanratty in an identity parade. She always intended to write a book, to which end she had secretly over the years drafted its contents, written hundreds of notes, and made numerous tape recordings. Yet for over 50 years she gave no interviews, despite persistent media pressure to do so. The Long Silence is, in essence, Valerie’s posthumous autobiography, explaining for the first time every explicit detail of those ‘cat and mouse’ five hours, as Michael and Valerie tried on 22 occasions to deter and thwart the apparently indecisive Hanratty.

As gripping as it is gruesome, How to Solve a Murder is a fascinating insight into the career of a forensic scientist. Includes a foreword from Dr Richard Shepherd, bestselling author of Unnatural Causes.

Forensic scientist Derek and forensic secretary Pauline have been at the forefront of some of the world’s most pioneering forensic science techniques. Their work has played a pivotal role in extremely high-profile cases across the years, putting murderers behind bars, discovering causes of seemingly inexplicable accidents and salvaging victims of tragic disasters.

Warmly recalled and brilliantly told, this must-read will teach you everything you’ve ever wanted to know about death and life, and all their brilliant peculiarities.