Private History

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.”

Case One: A little girl goes missing in the night. Case Two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack. Case Three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.

For the first time ever, the intimate thoughts and political decisions of Abraham Lincoln’s entire presidency - day by day. In a startlingly innovative format, journalist Stephen A. Wynalda has constructed a painstakingly detailed day-by-day breakdown of president Abraham Lincoln’s decisions in office - including his signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862; his signing of the legislation enacting the first federal income tax on August 5, 1861; and more personal incidents like the day his 11-year-old son, Willie, died.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK FINALIST FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NONFICTION “Riveting . . . a powerful snapshot of four young Chinese women attempting to assert control over the direction of their lives.” —The New York Times Book Review “As powerfully intimate as it is politically...

America's first families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and others who tend to the needs of the president and first family.

Armored cars, burner phones, top-notch weaponry, and top-secret missions - this is the life of today's private military contractor. Like author Simon Chase, many PMCs were once the world's top military operatives, and since retiring from outfits like US Navy SEAL TEAM Six and the UK's Special Boat Service, they have devoted their lives to executing missions too sensitive for the government to acknowledge. Chase reveals here for the first time the operations too hazardous and politically volatile to be officially sanctioned by his employers.

Winner of the 2025 Audie Award for Multi-Voiced Performance A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Absolutely gripping.” —The Washington Post “A masterpiece of oral history…stirring, surprising, grim, joyous, moving, and always riveting.” —Evan Thomas From the New York Times...

Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, considering how the ordinary things in life came to be.

England's Tudor monarchs - Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I - are perhaps the most celebrated and fascinating of all royal families in history. Their love affairs, their political triumphs, and their overturning of the religious order are the subject of countless works of popular scholarship. But for all we know about Henry's quest for male heirs or Elizabeth's purported virginity, the lives of the Tudor monarchs away from the public eye remain largely beyond our grasp, mostly not chronicled by previous historians.

A classic of investigative reporting, Spooks is a treasure trove of who-shot-who research on the metastasis of the United States intelligence community, whose practices and personnel have engulfed the larger society. Teeming with tales of wiremen, hitmen, and mobsters; crooked politicians and corrupt cops going about their business of regime-change, union-busting, wiretapping, money laundering, and industrial espionage, learn about: Richard Nixon's "Mission Impossible" war on Aristotle Onassis; not-so-deep-fake porno films starring the CIA's enemies; and much more.

Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.

Read by the author, Tiffany Jenkins 'Brilliantly original . . . endlessly fascinating and full of surprises' – Alice Loxton, author of Eighteen 'It is refreshing - and empowering - to read such a nuanced, thoughtful history of this slippery concept' – Kate Fox, author of Watching the English...

A deeply researched account of the life and legacy of the man who defined the profession of private eye. Allan Pinkerton, the world's most famous private detective, has been an enduring source of fascination since the nineteenth century. But the details of his impact, business empire, and private life have been incomplete. Drawing on overlooked primary sources, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones provides an authoritative account of the man and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (PNDA).

Bradley Manning perpetrated the biggest breach of military security in American history. While serving as an Army intelligence analyst, he leaked an astounding amount of classified information to WikiLeaks: classified combat videos, plus hundreds of thousands of documents from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and from embassies around the globe. Nearly all of WikiLeaks' headline-making releases of information have come from a single source: Bradley Manning.

Warren Beatty guarded his privacy even before he became a movie star, when he burst onto the screen in 1961 as the earnestly handsome all-American boy in Splendor in the Grass. When he started acting, Beatty kept secret the fact that actress Shirley MacLaine, already a star, was his older sister. Over time, he has cultivated a mystique, giving few interviews and instructing others not to talk about him. Until now.

Elizabeth II is within a few years of becoming the longest-reigning British monarch. A personally quiet, modest and dutiful person, she is far better-informed about the lives of her subjects than they often realize. She has known every Prime Minister since Winston Churchill and every American President since Eisenhower. Yet what of the woman behind the crown?

Find romance and mystery in the heart of New Orleans, on a cruise up the Mississippi River, and in a small mid-western town with a long-forgotten mystery of its own. Enjoy the first two books from the Secrets of the River Series Box Set including After Night Falls and Midnight in Darkness. AFTER NIGHT FALLS Tragedy, secrets, and heartache. It’s been the story of her life for years. Abigail knew that she should be afraid of him…but she wasn’t. Not even when he told her who he was…and why he was there. She’d taken a job on the cruise ship years ago with the thought that if she was ...

In Grace and Power, New York Times best-selling author Sally Bedell Smith takes us inside the Kennedy White House with unparalleled access and insight. Having interviewed scores of Kennedy intimates, including many who have never spoken before, and drawing on letters and personal papers made available for the first time, Smith paints a richly detailed picture of the personal relationships behind the high purpose and poiltical drama of the 20th century's most storied presidency.

Drawing on an array of primary sources in multiple languages, Farzin Vejdani argues that the ambiguity in defining the boundaries between private and public in Qajar Iran often corresponded with the jurisdictional friction between government authorities and religious scholars regarding who had the authority to police and punish public crimes.

A United States minister, senator, president, and congressman in turn, John Quincy Adams was one of the most prevalent and dedicated Americans in history. Drawing from Adams' 70-year diary, author Paul Nagel probes deeply into the psyche of this cantankerous, misanthropic, erudite, hardworking son of a former president whose remarkable career spanned so many offices.